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This month features part 1 of Chris's Tambourine tips......

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The campaign against lazy instruments!

Don’t let your instrument get away with it! Whatever you play, there’s always more that you can get out of your instrument. More colours, more notes, more… well, more music, actually.

One of the things that all the members of FourSight share is this interest in pushing the boundaries of techniques, and we hope to share a few ideas with you here.

Let’s start with one of the most basic of classroom percussion instruments – the tambourine. Generally you’ll just see it being hit. If you are going to hit it, it’s best done with the hands rather than a stick, as this gets more of the instrument moving, and therefore more jingle sound (otherwise, it’s just a rattly drum, hey?).

(I’m going to describe the next bit as if you’re right handed – if you’re not, then just change round all the rights and lefts. And don’t be embarrassed to be left handed – stand up for your lefts!)

First try holding the tambourine so that it’s parallel to the ground, in your left hand. Flick the tambourine up and down quickly – you should get two jingle sounds out – like the word ‘jingle’. Got that?

Good… now slap the tambourine with your right hand, spread out over the surface of the tambourine, in between each flick.

To the rhythm ‘Steve Bingham, Steve Bingham’ play this – ‘slap jingle slap jingle’.

One more sound for this session: still holding the tambourine parallel to the ground, tap near the edge with one finger of the right hand. You should get more of a note out of the tambourine – like a ‘dum’ sound. Tambourines vary, so you might not get that, but go for the richest, fullest sound that you can.

So the final rhythm here is ‘Steve Bingham FourSight’, played ‘slap jingle slap dum’.

Good luck with that! Next time we’ll look at different rhythms and different shakes.

Don’t let that instrument get lazy!